


maybe if the stars align, maybe if our world's collide

by myrmeraki



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biblical Scripture References (Abrahamic Religions), Canon-Typical Violence, Christianity, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Alive, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Gen, Language Barrier, Latin, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, No Beta we die like vikings, Non-Explicit Sex, Not Beta Read, Old Norse, Open Relationships, Protective Ragnar Lothbrok, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Religion, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Requited Unrequited Love, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Tenderness, Vikings, Violence, ooc: ragnar is better than he is in canon lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28761969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmeraki/pseuds/myrmeraki
Summary: the collision of worlds. the alignment of time. the work of God and the gods. coincidence is not so perfect, and so it must be fate.a divergent retelling of season 1 wherein Ragnar and Athelstan fall in love and there's less angst and death.
Relationships: Athelstan/Ragnar Lothbrok, Lagertha/Ragnar Lothbrok
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	1. novitious

**Author's Note:**

> I don't anything, not the universe or the plot or the characters, this is just a personal imaginative retelling. i just wrote a lot of this a year or so ago when i first watched vikings, and decided it might be time to put it out in the world with a little (read: a lot) of tweaking. 
> 
> Also, I make frequent use of language/linguistics here because the lack of concentration on learning languages and language barriers in this show irritated me. I use mostly online dictionaries and translators, and I'm 100% sure I've made many many mistakes. I apologize for that in advance. I used an old english dictionary online for the 'Saxon' language and for convenience's sake most of the 'Norse' language is modern Icelandic, because that's the closest counterpart to what would have been spoken at that time. 
> 
> I'll try to make a note at the end of what was said when I use non-modern english, just for readers clarity's sake.  
> kudos and comments much appreciated, drop a little something if you enjoyed or wanna see more!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> novitious- created anew

Blood dripped down Athelstan’s forehead, the knife used for chopping vegetables blunt against his skin.  
  
He clenched his teeth and continued dragging the blade over his head, ignoring the blood and pain and cutting as much hair as he could. Red drops fell into the bowl of water at his knees as he scraped at the hair faster, all too aware of Ragnar, Lagertha, and the children outside. The sounds of their movements and idle talk struck bolts of fear to his chest if the noises suddenly got louder or closer.  
  
Bjorn’s light laughter flew through the air and snapped Athelstan up. Though it would be useless, he gripped the knife tighter. In all their time the Lothbrok family had not once used force against him, even when they could and by other men’s standards should have. Not even now caught in the middle of his strange ritual did Lagertha raise a hand to him. She furrowed her eyebrows and looked him up and down with squinted eyes before herding children inside.  
  
In the afternoon when the sun sat directly above the sky and he was working the dirt, Athelstan ran his hand over his tonsure, half shaved in lines. The uneven lines and open cuts felt even odder under his fingertips than the sharp new hairs. He wondered if they would be angry with him, if they would finally take their pound of flesh from him in the name of their gods. Or maybe they didn’t know exactly what he was doing and would chalk it up to general Christian strangeness. After all, the northmen had their outward strange tendencies from their hair to the drawings on their skin.  
  
They were everything Athelstan had been lead to believe and had experienced, and yet nothing he had ever expected. They were bloody, ruthless, and strong, yes. He’d seen that time and time over. He’d seen them kill for pleasure and fight each other for sport, he’d seen them toss his brother’s body into the sea, and from what he’d heard at Kattegat, the killing of animals for their gods was not uncommon.  
  
And yet, in the care they showed, Athelstan could not bring himself to think of them all as savages and pagans. He saw Ragnar and Lagertha and felt their joy in each other, strange a couple they may be. He saw that most northmen did not have such outspoken hate for him as the Christians did for them in turn.  
  
And, most importantly to him, he remembered the cold. The deep cold from constant sea spray and wind, the cold that clung in wetness to his habit and his hair. The cold that kept him shivering in that boat, in the Earl’s hall, and on the hike back to Ragnar’s house.  
  
He remembered shivering as he fell asleep in the grass on that hike, and waking up with a second cloak tucked over him and newly dried hair. He never mentioned it to Ragnar, unsure if acknowledging such things was too bold, too loud. His thanks was in the silent way he folded the cloak back up into a square and placed it at the foot of Ragnar’s bed.  
  
“These worlds are opposite. And yet they are both true.” Athelstan whispered to the dirt. Taking a handful of it and closing his eyes. If he squinted hard enough, he could be crouching in the ground at Lindesfarne.  
  
“Why have you put me here, Lord. Why am I here? What do I need to see?”  
  
Both the dirt and sky gave no answers, and slowly Athelstan got to his feet.  
  
\---------  
  
“I would like to know more about your England,” Ragnar said with his silver smile pouring ale into their cups.  
  
Before them the fire cracked and popped, and far in their bedrooms Athelstan could occasionally hear Lagertha or the children moving. Sometimes the rustling noises came from outside the house and he thanked God for this small protection against everything wolves to demons.  
  
“Is it ruled by one king, one kingdom?”  
  
Athelstan no longer felt cold, not even the memory of being cold. His face was flush with blood under the skin and beads of sweat formed at his hairline. It was harder and harder to keep his eyes open with the late hour and the sweet ale. It was wonderfully different than wine of England, sweet and grainy where wine always left a bitter frown on his lips.  
  
“There are. . four kingdoms,” Athelstan said. His head even felt warm, his very mind sleepy and stumbling.  
  
Ragnar kept his stance leaning very close to him, bright blue eyes and golden silk hair swirling and filling his vision. The heat in Athelstan’s chest moved towards his stomach in a fearful jump.  
  
“You landed in the kingdom of Northumbria. . . the king there is King Aelle. He is a very powerful king.’  
  
Ragnar’s eyes flickered as the fire did, and Athelstan found it all too easy to convince himself that change had been a result of the fire’s cracks and shadows.  
  
“If he was so powerful, why did his men not protect your temple?” He spoke with the defiant air of a child playing a game, trying to catch you in a stumble.  
  
Still, the question both angered and confused him. It was really so different here, Ragnar and his men so far unknown. Athelstan tried to even think of how to explain.  
  
“Before your men came. . . we had no need to protect our monastery. We lived in peace.” From the look on Ragnar’s face, he was disbelieving. And why should he not be. How could he explain to him the social law. Did the northmen even have such laws, such conventions? To him it was a simple and easy fact  
  
“Everyone respected it as a place of God,” Athelstan attempted.  
  
Ragnar filled their cups again and this time Athelstan didn’t protest, in fact he welcomed the feeling of warmth and ease.  
  
“Why does your God need so much gold and silver, hm?” Ragnar started. “He must be a greedy God. . . like Loki!” A genuine spark of recognition lit Ragnar’s eyes as he gestured with his cup towards Athelstan in explanation.  
  
“We have greedy gods too.” Ragnar lifted his cup to his lips and Athelstan let the words pass through his ears before registering them. He blinked, hard, before finally looking away from Ragnar’s lips.  
  
“My God is not greedy. Christian people give away their riches to. . . to save their souls.” The words did not quite translate over so easy into Norse, but Athelstan assumed Ragnar would understand the concept.  
  
A flash of curiosity and darkness passed over Ragnar’s features. It made Athelstan lean backwards an inch and quiet his breath.  
  
“What are their. . . souls?” The last word fell heavy accented and clumsy from Ragnar’s lips.  
  
Athelstan blinked again and opened his mouth to explain but now words fell out. He stayed there for a few seconds, eyebrows furrowed together and looking Ragnar’s face up and down. Here fixed with firelight and ale they were open and easy to read, and he found no jest in them. So this is what they meant when they said a world without God was a worth without morals. Ragnar genuinely did not know, could no fathom even what his eternal soul was, let alone to responsibilities of holding it.  
  
How to explain it? How to explain to a blind man the gift of moonlight, or a deaf man the feel of music?  
  
“Souls are. . . yourself.”  
  
“Their bodies?” Ragnar sneered.  
  
Athelstan shook his head and took another long sip of ale. He let the drink sit in his mouth before swallowing and wiped the line of sweat from his forehead with the edge of his shirt.  
  
“No. A part of you that is. . . not of this world. Not material. They live forever and go to the. . . afterlife.”  
  
Ragnar shook his head and leaned in closer to Athelstan, making up for what distance he had placed there. Ragnar moved and spoke in such ways and tones as if getting closer, brighter, quieter would somehow reveal the truth. All it did reveal was an uncomfortably hot feeling in Athelstan’s chest as his heart quickened, from what he could not place.  
  
“They are a part of you and yet not you at all. Your God is very confusing.”  
  
Athelstan sighed as he struggled for the right words. Even in his native language this explanation would be difficult, but finding the right translations and the right connotations made it almost impossible. The haze of ale made his search for words all the harder. He would find a river of thought and end up grasping onto it like it was a fish in a river. It eventually slipped away.  
  
“It is-” Athelstan finally latched onto a coherent idea and pulled it in hand over hand.  
  
“It is like your Valhalla.”  
  
This got Ragnar’s attention. He turned his head to the side like a curious dog and nodded for him to go on.  
  
“Your body does not disappear from the world when you enter your god’s kingdom. That part of you that goes, that essence, that is your soul.”  
  
Ragnar tilted his chin up the slightest bit, as if he were starting to understand. Now that the words came to him, Athelstan didn’t seem to be able to stop. Even if the viking did not fully know the meaning of many words he used, Athelstan felt pulled to continue. Pulled into him and his questions by some other force much stronger than his own will.  
  
“Your soul is your very being. Your energy and your spirit. It is what gives life in your eyes and in your heart. It bears the weight of all your choices, all your deeds and sins, your loves and losses. It. . .” Athelstan trailed off wistfully, noticing only then he’d drained and seat down his cup and was gesturing wildly with his hands. He stifled a yawn and lost some of his fervor, although was pleased to see a level of mirth in Ragnar’s eyes.  
  
“I understand well enough, priest.” Ragnar’s lips curled up into a halfway smirk, the kind fit for the edge of a joke or witty remark. Athelstan thought about correcting him once more in saying that he was not, technically, a priest.  
  
“We are not so different as you think, you know. Your people,” he grasped the top of his cup with his fingers and gestured towards Athelstan with it’s bottom, “And mine.”  
  
Ragnar drained the rest of his cup, his neck muscles moving as he swallowed. Some small golden bubbles rested just above his lips as he removed the cup, and Athelstan smiled.  
“Valhalla is not a kingdom,” he said after a beat. Athelstan found himself once more consciously looking up from Ragnar’s lips back to his eyes.  
  
“It is a great, great hall. Filled with all the dead warriors of our past. We feast and drink and tell stories with the Allfather, and with our companions of life.”  
  
“In my heaven we rejoin our lost loved ones, and we live in eternal happiness and in His glory.” Athelstan murmured and slipped into the toneal habit of preaching to schoolchildren on a missionary journey. Telling such things and stories to Ragnar was more similar to teaching an eager child than he’d ever expected.  
  
“A large kingdom where everyone is happy all the time,” Ragnar shook his head. “It is ridiculous.”  
  
Athelstan would have argued but his eyes felt too heavy to do so.  
  
“Never mind that though” Ragnar set his cup down and leaned back, only to bring his stool closer to Athelstan. If Athelstan swayed forward enough he could hit their foreheads together. The idea brought a cloudy smile to his lips.  
  
“I want to learn some of your language. Learn of your England.”  
  
At this Athelstan did laugh, and out of habit brought his hand up from rubbing the back of his neck to raking his fingers through his hair. The slightly sweaty strands fell too close to his eyes and he pushed them back with a wince. He’d forgotten the wounds over his tonsure from this morning and absentmindedly scratched them open. That morning was seemingly days ago now. When he slowly removed his fingers from his hair their tips were stained dark red, and the wounds on his head now broke open and bled afresh.  
  
“You scared the children with that,” Ragnar nodded.  
  
“I don’t think your son was scared.”  
  
Ragnar laughed in one quick bark, like a the snap of a wolf.  
  
“That is how he is.” Ragnar gave Athelstan space as he poked and prodded at the cuts, feeling for a source and trying to push the bloody hair away.  
  
“Bjorn would laugh in the face of a wild bear if he could. He is grown, and yet young.”  
  
Ragnar stood and poured himself another cup of ale as he wandered the room, glancing this way and that. Athelstan gave up trying to fix his hair and leaned his head slightly back. The sticky feeling over his fingers and the metal smell of it would not leave him, even as he wiped his hands over his borrowed breeches.  
  
“The Saxon language is difficult. _Hit hê missenlic._ ”  
  
Behind and around him Athelstan could hear Ragnar picking things up and putting them now, murmuring something to himself.  
  
He retired back to him, to Athelstan’s surprise, with a long knife, a deep bowl of water, and a rag. The ale buzzing in his stomach and in his head quieted his fear at seeing the knife. Too fresh was the memory of Ragnar’s sea-eyes piercing through him as he held a knife to Athelstan’s throat, about to do the same.  
  
He tilted his head up and flinched backwards with a groan and a screech from the stool. Ragnar gave a low wolf’s laugh again and sat the bowl down. It was large and filled to the brim with water, some of the liquid splashing along the rim up and over onto the floor. He sat beside the bowl on the floor, now under Athelstan’s eye level.  
  
“ _Nei vera hræddur_ , priest.” Ragnar took the knife in his hand and held it sideways, palm out. The same mocking smile played over his lips as he slowly set the knife down to his side and then flicked it some feet across the floor.  
  
“What are you doing?” Athelstan’s chest remained tight and the blood in his veins still hot and pounding slightly stronger. The fire and the light were slowly shrinking and yet Athelstan found himself growing hotter and hotter. Some coals below his stomach were eating the smoke and heart.  
  
Ragnar did not respond but loosely rolled up his sleeves and made a “come here” motion, palms inward and gesturing to his chest. Athelstan looked away from his chest.  
  
“If I meant to kill you I would have done it, priest. We also do not let those under our house go sick.”  
  
Athelstan shaky but curious joined him. He moved the stool back as quiet as could be and sat with Ragnar on the wooden floor, automatically copying Ragnar stance of crossing his legs.  
  
Again Athelstan was reminded of how opposing the people of the north were. Ragnar filled the space between them with teasing remarks about his appearance, his clumsiness, his Saxon-ness. Athelstan was grateful he couldn’t fully understand Ragnar’s jokes, the daily language of the north still not completely smooth on his tongue. At the same time Ragnar dipped the rag in the water and cleaned Athelstan’s hair and wounds, as gentle as if he were a child. The water tinted red dripped back into the bowl as Ragnar ran his fingers through Athelstan’s tangled hair and soft over his scalp.  
  
Like everything that took place that night, Athelstan knew it was softened by the haze of fire and wearyness and ale. He doubted Ragnar would be so achingly kind to him in the light of day, or if they would joke as they had, or if he would be so fearless. As he shifted his legs, the humor of their picture was not lost on him. Closing his eyes and kneeling facing down, this was nearly the mirror of prayer. If Athelstan brought his hands together or had them do anything rather than hold them clenched in fists at his sides it would be prayer. And on the other side of him not a Church or God but this strange pagan man drunkenly caring for him like a child.  
  
“E _ins og særður fugl, priest. Af hverju klippaðir þú fjaðrirnar þínar_?”  
  
Eyes closed and almost lost, Athelstan could barely pick onto the meaning of the words. He knew the scornful and yet joking “priest” and something about a bird. He was not paying enough attention then, Ragnar would not be talking about birds unless he really was much more drunk than he let on.  
  
Athelstan leaned into the touch, Ragnar's hands warm and rough skinned, the rag and the water freshly cold. The water stung his wounds but washed away the blood dried there. Though no match for a full bath of his hair, even the dried bits of blood weighing it down were slowly coaxed out. Ragnar used one hand to soak and wring the rag and the other to stroke through his hair.  
  
Now he pressed the rag firm but yielded against the sensitive wounds, obviously trying to get them to stop bleeding. Athelstan had no idea so much blood could come from a series of cuts across the top of his head. He felt Ragnar's other hand resting on the back of his neck, coming up to idly tie into his hair and curl around the strands. The near back of his head was cleaned yet he lingered there, not to tend to him it seemed but to simply stay there. For no reason and every reason, Athelstan’s heart clenched in his chest.  
  
As Ragnar pulled the rag back, Athelstan found himself leaning forward for a half a second, chasing something although what he was unsure of. The second hand by his neck did not leave, but moved to clasp his shoulder in a rough but friendly hold.  
  
“Take care if you chose to bleed yourself again. They would get worse.”  
  
“ _Wæter_.” Athelstan all but whispered. He would have elaborated but it was effort enough as it was to open his eyes and face Ragnar forward. Ragnar’s eyes held that same ocean wide stare as they did when he spared Athelstan at Lindesfarne. It would have chilled him was Athelstan not still sweating.  
  
“Come again, priest?”  
  
“In the language of England, _vatn_ is _wæter_.”  
  
Ragnar chuckled and brought away the bowl of water. Athelstan stood up, dizzy although not from lack of food, drink, or air. He brought a tentative hand to his head and found no blood. All that was there was the imprint of the water and a red flush over his neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loose Translations:  
> Nei vera hræddur- "No need to be afraid"  
> Eins og særður fugl, priest. Af hverju klippaðir þú fjaðrirnar þínar?- "You are like a little bird", "Why would you cut your feathers?"


	2. mea culpa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mea culpa - my fault

"You are angry with me.”

Athelstan rubbed the thin line pressed around the back of his neck from the lead as they walked and said nothing. He was a trusting and naive fool, and this was his retribution. To ever seen a shade of wholeness or pure intent in Ragnar was a weakness, and this was God’s way of showing just how wrong he was. 

“I do not blame you.”

It seemed everyone at the Lothbrok house was just as angry as he was for one reason or another. Athelstan heard Ragnar and Lagertha talk in hushed tones back and forth as they worked around each other. 

“I have the earl’s permission to sail back to England. I want to do that as soon as possible.” 

“How soon is that?” Lagertha seemed to have invented a new way to wrap herbs as violently as possible. 

“Tomorrow.”

Athelstan felt as if he were one of the children, sitting next to them at their table and waiting in both fear and giddy anticipation. Athelstan was much more fueled by fear than Bjorn seemed to be, his bright eyes darting from his father to his mother in time. 

“We all wish you success. We will make a sacrifice to Odin” Lagertha sounded like she would much rather kill Ragnar instead of a goat, but Athelstan assumed the venom in her words was meant to be displayed. Bjorn snickered and caught Gyda’s eyes. They smiled at each other with words unspoken, the way Athelstan had seen many young children at the monastery converse. Despite everything, their familiar lighthearted patterns of youth brought a half-smile to his face. 

“Are you not coming?” Ragnar turned around with his eyes shining like jewels and his characteristic cunning smile. 

“What?’

“I want you to come with me.”

“But. . . the farm, the children?”

At this Ragnar caught Athelstan’s eyes for a moment, as if he could know what was going on and play a happy accomplice to Ragnar’s plan.

“Bjorn is still young, but he can help on the farm.”

“But who will be in charge?” Bjorns eyes flashed from his father to his mother to Gyda, trying to piece their words together. Only when Ragnar looked back and Athelstan, right in the eyes, did Bjorn the rest of them follow.

“The priest.”

“Father!” Bjorn rose from his seat in anger, his lower lip jutting out halfway in a sulk. 

“You cannot place a slave above me, your natural son!”

Ragnar did not look at his son but held Athelstan’s gaze, in which Athelstan tried to speak to him silently, to plead with him to abandon his efforts and to not place deaths on his head. 

“Please don’t do this Ragnar.”

“He is no slave to me,” Ragnar said plainly and with a sharp ending tone. They would not discuss that matter any further, and his word was now law. Ragnar ignored Athelstan’s words and turned to his daughter.

“What do you think Gyda?”

“I don’t mind,” she said with a light smile towards Athelstan, unaware of the tensions between them. 

“I like the priest.” 

“Then it is decided.”

Bjorn’s mouth hung open in shock before he sat back down and glared at Athelstan. He wanted to tell Bjorn that he didn’t want this any more than Bjorn did, but Lagertha bent down to his level before he could do anything.

“If any harm befalls my children, _mun rífa lungun_ _frá þér_.” 

Athelstan did not understand the entirety of her threat but her fiery eyes and the kitchen knife in her hands spoke for her. Athelstan nodded as Bjorn chuckled and reached for his drink. He really was so like his father in his mannerisms, only much younger and more open. 

“What did she say?” Athelstan asked Bjorn. 

His demeanor faltered as he wiped his mouth and twisted his eyebrows in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t speak your language fully. What did she mean?”

“She would hurt you,” Gyda said simply as she traced her fingers absentmindedly over the wood.

“ _Rífa út lungun_ ,” Bjorn repeated. Bjorn took a dramatic deep breath and gestured to his chest with a cruel smile. He went on miming and explaining until realization dawned on Athelstan’s features. Rip out your lungs. Alright then.

He widened his eyes in question to see if Bjorn was playing a trick on him. Bjorn just smiled and looked at Gyda for appreciation. She in turn rolled her eyes and admonished her brother again in words Athelstan only halfway understood. 

Long cold food and night chores forgotten, Athelstan mumbled a short and almost silent prayer before leaving the table and going outside. The wind and the night air bit through his habit and he wrapped the robe tighter around his shoulders. The rough path of turned up dirt was familiar under his bare feet, and the stars above him a welcome sight. Again if he held his breath he could pretend once more to be at Lindesfarne, back in the monastery with his brothers. 

He sat by the water, legs crossed with his hood up, and looked into the sky. There were certain patterns of stars that had names, some with large recognizable shapes. He was under the same sky he’d always been. He was still in God’s world, if not in his true kingdom. 

“Are you so determined to kill yourself, priest?”

Athelstan turned sharp around and flicked his hood back. Ragnar stood with his arms crossed over. He’d removed his tough leather vest and his boots, looking like he’d been woken from sleep. 

“Will you never leave me a moment _friþ_?” 

“What does that word mean?”

Athelstan felt fiery anger in his hands flowing up to his chest. For the moment he understood the violence and rage demonstrated by the Northmen. For the moment he wished he could roar and fight and scream, _how dare you, I almost trusted you, how dare you?_

“I will not fall for your tricks, _pagan_. I will not help you.” 

Ragnar shrugged and stared at the sky again. Athelstan’s anger quieted and his solemn emptiness returned. People would die, he knew that. Good people. Christian people. And any tricks Ragnar would pull on them, any instances of navigation, any false communication, was directly Athelstan’s fault. He might as well have to lead them to England himself. 

“Suit yourself. I will talk to you then.”

Ragnar sat next to him on the grass, resting his forearms on his knees and tilting his head back to the sky. Athelstan mirrored Ragnar if only to look away from him. Even here with the only light the distance fire of their hearth and the crescent moon, Ragnar’s eyes were unnaturally bright. Like something you would see hiding in the treeline, an animal with teeth and claws.

“In our stories, this sky is the skull of the giant _Ymir_.” Athelstan looked from the sky to Ragnar’s face. His straw-colored hair was sweaty from the long day’s work, and Athelstan noticed an ax hung from his hip. He shifted a step away from him, still wary of being within attacking range. 

Ragnar noticed this and stopped his storytelling, looking from Athelstan’s contained form, his knees now to his chin, to the ax at his belt. He smiled and held the ax up, swinging it and turning it in front of him.

“How many times must I tell you, I have no wish to kill you?”

“One can never be too careful.”

“What must I do to convince you?” Ragnar tossed the ax lightly in the air and Athelstan leaned even farther back from his as it came down, spinning. Ragnar reached out and grabbed hold of it from its long handle once more. He stood, turned around, and with two hands threw the ax over his head and towards the woods. It landed with a thunk near the treeline.

He sat back down next to Athelstan whose heart pumped loud blood into his ears. The beats were so strong they seemed to rise up and out of his body, his very skin moving up and down with the blood under it. 

“In the beginning there was nothing. The darkness of _Ginnungagap_.” 

Athelstan blinked in surprise at Ragnar’s words, almost identical to those of the Bible. If he didn’t know so surely that Ragnar had no knowledge of God except what he gave him, Athelstan would say he was pulling a trick on him. And yet Ragnar sat there, every word a truth. Too much the truth. 

“No earth, no sky, no people. Emptiness forever.” Ragnar stretched his hands up and wide to the sky as if emphasizing the scope of his words. He looked to Athelstan who sat looking not at the sky anymore but at him, and continued back into his story, stopping every now and then to explain a word or phrase Athelstan had not heard. It took time but soon Athelstan understood. 

“On either side of the darkness were the land of fire, _Muspelheim_ , and the land of ice, _Niflheim_. As the ice and fire collided together,” Ragnar brought his hands back together in fists, and made a banging sound, “ _Ymir_ was born. And from him some sons and daughters whose names escape me, those children half god and half-giant. And from _those_ children-”

Athelstan leaned towards him, shuffling closer this time instead of away. Ragnar shifted to face him too, their knees a palm’s width away. 

“Was born Odin the Allfather. Odin and his brothers, Vili and Ve.” 

Ragnar held up his hands again, entranced by the storytelling. Athelstan could easily imagine him reciting this same story to Bjorn or Gyda, with the highs and lows of dramatic voice and the exciting motioning. In fact, Athelstan remembered doing the same and listening to the same back in England. Stories of God, of Moses, of King Arthur and Charlemagne alike. Stories he sat and reveled in as a child, and stories he retold as a young man. It was comfortable and yet uncomfortable to find such similarities between them, and Athelstan pushed away from the light thoughts of comparison. 

_This man almost killed me_ , he thought, although the image of Ragnar throwing away his ax came back to mind. Without thought or hesitation.

 _This man has kept me in heathen land against my will_ , he thought, although the image of the rope cut away from his neck and Ragnar insisting he was not a slave to him came back to mind.

“And this sky is Ymir’s head?” Athelstan said quietly, half hoping that Ragnar would not hear his questions and not know he had been invested. Ragnar’s eyes twinkled and he grinned.

“Yes and no. When Odin and his brothers killed Ymir, they made Midgard of his body.”

Ragnar reached forward and grabbed at the dirt, pulling up a small chunk of soil. He continued explaining his world myth, miming the words as he went 

“They made the earth from his skin and muscles.” He tapped Athelstan’s leg, just above the knee at the muscle there and Athelstan swore if he checked the next morning there would have been a painted mark there. 

“And the oceans and waters from his blood. And the plants from his hair.” Ragnar again reached out towards Athelstan and then faltered, pulling his hand back and loosening the soil he was holding. Athelstan tried to hide how he had leaned forward in anticipation of him.

“The clouds from his brain,” Ragnar pointed to his head, “And the sky from his skull.” 

He spread the dirt back on the ground and whipped his hands on his trousers. 

“You see priest. This, too, is the land of the gods. The very land, the gods.” Ragnar then leaned towards him, his elbows resting on his knees and as he pushed himself forward. 

“What did that word mean?” He licked his lips and whispered. He held no silver smile, no wolf's teeth, no snake’s glare. Ragnars eyes were open and calm, his mouth not twisted but resting, the corners of his mouth pointed out and his lips full. 

“ _Friþ._ To be left alone.” _Peace._

“To be alone? It does not sound desirable.”

“No, it’s not exactly that. Peace is-" , Athelstan paused to think, "-to not be disturbed. And-“

Ragnar did not pester him and did not edge him for a final comment. Athelstan wondered if he should tell him that other meaning of the word.

“And to be without violence. To make peace is to show no ill intent.” 

Athelstan took a deep breath, his jaw chattering from the cold and from some other pressing, restless feeling. He needed to be standing or moving or running for his life although there was no present danger. The movement was confined to his shaking teeth and wringing hands. 

He looked up at the sky, all the stars different now, and he supposed in the curve of it all it could look like the inside of a skull. How terrifying and how large to imagine it, all of them just ants to whatever giants were there before them. 

It was a falsity, a tale, he had to remind himself. There was no faith in it and no truth. Another pagan lie to enchant and fool. _But_ ; a small part of himself reasoned, reasoned because it was bored and reasoned because it wanted to be stubborn; _it was a wonderful story_. 

By midday next morning Ragnar and Lagertha had gone and sailed away, leaving Athelstan with the children. As they continued the days feeding chickens and picking herbs and cutting fish, Athelstan often wondered what they were doing at that same time. For those first many days, they would be on their ships, rolling in the waves and feet aching with cold. In the dazed moments between sleep and waking Athelstan could almost see them. They were blurry swaying shapes on the ships, rowing in time like a beating heart. 

Athelstan knew that when Ragnar landed on a grey beach somewhere in England he would say with his silver tongue and wolf smile in almost perfect Saxon: “ _Wit béoþ cipemarmas_ ” and the men that greeted them would expect goods and conversation instead of blood and blade. 

Athelstan knew when Ragnar followed his introduction with, “ _Wit curnan friþ”_ he would be both to blame and to thank. 


	3. solis occasum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> solis occasum- the setting sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i straight up have been using google translate and a mish-mash of other websites for the old english- once again if there are language mistakes forgive me my ignorance. kudos and comments appreciated!

Bjorn’s angry words still rung in his ears as Athelstan gripped the Gospel of John to his chest once more. The pages smelled musty and like dirt, and he feared for their quality if it was kept hidden. The depictions of holy men and the stylized, curved lettered calmed him, although they did not soothe him completely. 

He was angry too, and he said so. Confused, always confused, and now for the first time in his life, he was angry at God. The thought should have filled him with shame and apology, but it did not. He was filling a groove here on the Lothbrok’s farm. Despite everything, Ragnar had been kind to him. Despite everything, Lagertha had not yet killed him. Bjorn was a firey spirit, but in the way so many children were. He was, Athelstan had noticed, like his father in that regard. Gyda too was like her father in her unmatched and unexpected kindness.

Athelstan felt like he was being torn away from himself. He trusted his own feelings as much as he trusted the word of God these days. Every now and again guilt caught up with him for believing such, a hard instilled network of self-hate. And a voice in his head, or maybe in his soul, would ask why. Where in the Bible did it say it was wrong to trust one’s self? Athelstan’s heart was heavy anyway. There was confusion as to why God had put him here, and fear in asking _if_ God had put him here and _if_ this was truly part of His plan. The heathen’s had apparently affected him more than he’d been able to shield, as Athelstan welcomed in anger to the mix of emotions he held up to the light. Anger in himself for helping Ragnar, and more anger on top of that because he was not as angry at himself for aiding heathens as he should have been. It was a never-ending chain of actions and reactions, judgment built off of other judgment that was itself several realms away from his actual action or thought.

“For the first time in my life, I feel lonely,” Athelstan confessed to the empty room. 

Without Ragnar and Lagertha’s presence on the other side of the thin wall, he was feeling more and more alone on many different levels. He had not been so surrounded by this level of space and quiet since he was a boy, long before the monastery. Even then he had God. Now he was not so sure. The doubt shamed him, like so many other things in this country. 

“Where are you, Lord?” Athelstan whispered, hoping against hope that the darkness would provide some sort of answer. 

A shuffling noise sounded from the rest of the room, and in a heartbeat Athelstan expected Ragnar Lothbrok to walk up to him and tease him with words he only half understood. Ragnar did not appear, and Athelstan picked up the candle to see what was there. The disappointment added another strange layer to the complex storm he was housing in his mind.

The noise came from a bird in the rafters, a great owl no less. Athelstan smiled at its discovery. The owl was a sign of wisdom in both the Bible and in pagan story, he remembered. A universal symbol that bound the two worlds together in clear meaning. With a ruffle of its feathers, the owl cleared Athelstan’s head. He clenched his jaw and made his way to where the children slept.

“Bjorn. Bjorn, wake up,” He said, gently prodding at the furs the boy slept on. Bjorn woke up groggily, squinting into the candle with his eyebrows knitted together. 

“We will go to Kattegat tomorrow. All of us.” Athelstan nodded and Bjorn with his eyes half-closed nodded back. 

They left when the sky was still grey and hurried through the woods, Bjorn excited and leading the way. Multiple times Athelstan slowed or tripped and Bjorn admonished him as if he were the adult and Athelstan the child. It made Athelstan’s heart glad that his actions had brought such life to the boy’s heart.

Of course, the much needed lighthearted mood shifted into darkness as they hurried into town, finding not a happy raiding party but a solemn gathering in the Earl’s hall. For a few minutes, Athelstan guessed at the worst, that they had lost many lives or somehow news of the entire party's death had been spread. A sinking, empty feeling dug through his chest to his stomach, searching the heads and faces for anyone he might recognize. He could tell Bjorn and Gyda shared his same fears, and try as he might he could not muster up any words of optimism for their sake. The glares from other Northmen were shaken off like drops of water as Athelstan continued with the children to search and push through the crowd until they spotted a woman with familiar braids.

“Lagertha! What has happened-”

“They arrested him,” she said sharply. Bjorn and Gyda embraced her as Athelstan turned away, eyes to the floor. This was not a moment for him, and it was not a moment that should take place in this angry and crowded hall. They deserved better than this. 

Athelstan was surprised to realize the thought within himself, but he found it true. Twice now Ragnar and his party had come back with goods and twice had this earl enacted punishment upon him. These were treasures taken from England, from his lands and his country, and yet at first look, he recognized the spoils in front of him as Ragnar’s more than anyone else’s. 

“Why did they take him?” Bjorn demanded, fists balled and shoulders set back. The determination and sharp anger overlaying his features were wholly Lagertha; Athelstan would have made that connection even if Lagertha weren’t wearing an identical look just next to Bjorn. 

“Do not worry about that, it will be alright.” Lagertha pushed back Bjorn’s hair and wrapped her other arm around Gyda’s shoulders. She glanced up at Athelstan for a second, the warrior’s paint around her eyes making them look even harsher than usual. Instead of the expected anger, Athelstan found such open fear it made him look away. There was a softness in her features and in the way she held herself like she was only pretending to be put together. Lagertha didn’t say anything to him, but she nodded her head down. The movement was so slow and small it was almost invisible, but Athelstan caught it. He offered her a similarly shaken and anxious nod before turning towards the center of the hall.

Earl Haraldson came to his throne, circled by Northmen with spears and shields. 

“Bring out the prisoner.” 

Athelstan could not understand the final word he spoke, but at his command, the main doors open, and more guards appeared. Though he was short and the view limited, Athelstan knew by his gait alone that the man brought forth would be Ragnar. 

It was an unfit sight to see Ragnar Lothbrok in chains like this, guarded against and heckled by the villagers like he was a common criminal. Athelstan reasoned with himself that even though he was a pagan and a killer, one thing Ragnar Lothbrok would never be was common. Some well-educated men of England somewhere might agree with him, that there was more than just Christian and Barbarian. In the crescent shadow of those circles, there was a dim-light area where Ragnar fell. A pagan who talked like a philosopher and walked like a king. 

Even in this most urgent situation Athelstan felt his mind open and wander. Another contradiction to add to the list. Ragnar Lothbrok, a heathen, and a scholar. A warrior and a farmer. It made Athelstan’s head hurt trying to make excuses for Ragnar and then shaming himself for those excuses. 

Athelstan was not the only one making excuses for Ragnar in this hall. At the Earl’s accusations that Ragnar was disloyal and had forsaken their traditions the villagers erupted, Bjorn included in all his new anger. From what Athelstan knew, Bjorn had been received as a man and no longer a boy quite recently by Kattegat. It placed a sick feeling in his stomach that this child knew more and was stronger than him in the physical and societal sense of the word. Athelstan had never doubted his character or his role, and yet here in Kattegat the wish to be more Viking than priest wormed its way into his heart. The Viking way was the heathen way, but here it was a respectable path. In England Athelstan was a respected man. He had no status but where he traveled, people would be kind to him. Here, he was due to less kindness than a child and had less usefulness than a child. 

“It is true that I killed Knut,” Ragnar said, not the Athelstan’s surprise. He wondered in the back of his mind why exactly this murder was so important and decided to ask Ragnar about it after this. If there was an after this. More anxiety dripped like poison into Athelstan’s stomach.

“But I killed him when I found him trying to rape my wife.” Ragnar turned around, unbothered by his chains, and straightened his spine.

“I ask all of you free men, what would you have done if you were in my place? Would you have stood back, and encouraged the culprit?” With each word Ragnar moved and turned, growing louder. All eyes in the room were on him from the moment he opened his mouth, and a quietness filled the hall as it had not when the Earl was speaking. More people wanted to hear what Ragnar had to say than Haraldson. 

The Earl spoke to Lagertha then, and she swore at him in a way that set the hall alight with chatter once more. A shorter, thick, and half-bald man standing to the side of Haraldson explained the situation, and Athelstan pieced the bits of it together as best he could. He wondered himself whether Lagertha or Ragnar had killed Knut, as he knew firsthand they were both experienced and passionate enough to do it. 

“We have a witness,” the shorter man said, which quieted the hall. At this Athelstan watched Ragnar’s careful presentation shift as he looked around him. To Athelstan’ssurprise, Rollo stepped forward. He would have thought this a good thing, however, Ragnar’s brother had been less than kind to him in the few instances he’d observed. Both Ragnar and Lagertha looked tense and guarded.

There was a moment of stillness after Rollo told the Earl wrong as if the whole hall were waiting for him to take it back, the Earl included.

“What Ragnar Lothbrok has sworn is true. Your brother was caught raping a Saxon woman, and he attempted to rape Lagertha the shieldmaiden.” Rollo looked near Athelstan was standing, at Lagertha. He held her eyes for a beat before continuing. Athelstan found this roundabout process both strange and fulfilling. A woman in England would have never been given such rights and values, the reasoning for murder the defense of a woman would be laughable. Athelstan wondered what that said about the laws of a pagan Kattegat and a Christian England. 

“You cannot punish him,” Rollo finished.

Ragnar, gleeful as a child, held up his chained hands open in victory. 

##  **__________**

Despite trying to leave or lag behind, Athelstan was dragged along with the rest of the Lothbrok family to the house of one of Ragnar’s party. Athelstan found himself surrounded by towering men with sharp blades and tankards of ale and mead. It was as unsettling as it was intoxicating, which was to say it was like most things he’d experienced in Kattegat. 

The raider’s told stories of their journeys, most of it slurred and rushed and all of it exaggerated. The victory over the Earl as well as the claim to half the hoard was enough to make them all happy for a lifetime.

Athelstan wished he could try and feel the same. The children were laughing and listening to the stories, Ragnar was drinking like he’d been thirsty for his entire life, and all around him was a warm glow of joy. A joy that came from the pillaging of Christian land. A joy that meant their families would be fed next winter. Pagan families. Families with children. 

He could not wrap his head around it. There was no way for both to be right and yet face to face with all he was supposed to be hating and condemning he could muster up no malice. There was a way, there had to be a way to keep his faith but not the violence and hatred that came with it. The constant thinking made the mead in his stomach churn.

“Drink with me?” 

Athelstan looked up to a red-cheeked Ragnar holding two horns in between his fingers and a large pitcher in the other. He was swaying slightly side to side as if he were still at sea. Athelstan suspected this was part from drink and part from his constant need for movement. Even in times of relaxation, Ragnar was always wanting to do something, even the smallest of actions. To learn more Saxon, to chop wood as they talked, to move from challenge to challenge like they were curious stones to be overturned and examined. 

“Of course.” Athelstan took the horn and held it out, letting Ragnar fill Athelstan’s horn followed by his own with mead. The drink was strong and much sweeter than ale, coating his lips with its thick honey flavor. 

“I thank you for caring for my children.” Ragnar knocked shoulders with Athelstan as he sat down and looked in the direction of his children. Gyda and now Bjorn was asleep on furs on the floor near the fire, curled like young dogs near the feet of Arne and Floki. 

Athelstan thought about what to say if there was anything right to say. He had not wanted this responsibility and yet looking back on it, he was proud to have done it. If it happened again Athelstan would have done the same and done all he could to care for the children, even if they were capable of providing for themselves. 

He simply nodded to Ragnar as they clashed their horns together, drops of mead splashing up like rough ocean spray. 

Ragnar leaned against the wall, his head almost resting on Athelstan’s shoulder. The closeness was unfamiliar and should have upset him, but once again he felt inexplicably pulled _towards_ instead of away. There was an exhibited closeness between all of them that unsettled Athelstan with its foreign nature. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d embraced someone, as physical closeness both in England and in the monastery was confined to stiff gestures, shaken hands, and brief exchanges between family. 

Here, at least in Ragnar’s band, they could not become close enough to each other. Arne and Erik held onto each other's shoulders, their foreheads touching as they danced in rowdy circles like a storm. Floki did not stop throwing his arms around anyone who would listen to him recount the trial. Even Lagertha, a married woman who in his world would rarely interact closely with any other men, sat on a bench leaning on Torstein’s side. 

“How are your wounds?” 

“Oh!” Athelstan realized Ragnar was talking about the scratches on his head. He brushed his fingers over his even more overgrown tonsure, the scratches there now closed and just a memory. 

“I am well. You speak as if I’ve been in battle.”

Ragnar shrugged.

“It is as I have said. We care for our own.” 

Athelstan would be lying if he said he wasn’t touched or wasn’t grateful. It was the truth, but it shouldn’t have been. Of course, he was grateful. They had been kind, much kinder than most. They’d trusted him. Ragnar had trusted him.

“I am glad to see your party in a safe return. And I’m sorry for those you lost.” 

Ragnar’s face turned serious and nodded. 

“We have all of us lost too many. I feel no shame in saying I mourn for them,” He said in a whisper. Ragnar met his eyes with his lips set and his chin tilted up as if challenging him to tell him he was wrong. Another thing that was different here, for their closeness and their strength the Northmen did not heavily let their guards down. Both physically and mentally it seemed they were constantly fighting, showing passion and camaraderie and strength, but never grief or sadness or softness. Athelstan was all too aware of their feelings against softness. For his hair, for his frame, for his love of art, they whispered about him. He could not hear nor translate all their words, but he knew they did nonetheless. They would be whispering about him here too, and why Ragnar Lothbrok, son of Odin, would ever take interest or protection in the man that had not yet been proven a man. Athelstan often wondered the same. 

In the beginning, before they’d shared more than a few words, Athelstan feared it was for dark motives. He feared he would be stolen away the same way many women were, and taken against his will. If the recent trial proved anything, it was how explicitly the practice was allowed. A woman had rights as a free person, but any kind of slave was barely a person at all. If he were not with Ragnar his ill fate would have been sealed by the time he landed at Kattegat. 

In these thoughts, Athelstan’s mind wandered back to his first night with the family, still scared and still not knowing what if any violence would fall upon him. He thought of Lagertha and Ragnar, all shining eyes and smooth skin and sharp muscle inviting him casually to their bed. He had anticipated this coercion and with his eyes locked on the ground and his arms wrapped around his gospel, expected for them to make him. He remembered a wide and fiery look in Ragnar’s eyes that he hadn’t seen again until the day he left for England once more. It was the look he held when staring into the sky, and into the infinite stars. Athelstan wasn’t sure what that meant, and to his shame, he was afraid to find out. 

Athelstan was all too suddenly aware of their closeness with the formation of an uncomfortable ball of snakes in his chest. 

“Your men, they would go to your Vallhalla, yes?” He said with a swallow. 

“They were not my _men_ , priest. They were my friends, all of them.” Ragnar held his hand up in a gesture to the room full of people, and a few men recognized this and raised their horns to him. 

“You are my friend as well.” Ragnar put an open hand on Athelstan’s thigh and leaned his head down close to him. When Athelstan turned to face him, their foreheads were almost close enough to touch, and Athelstan could see every detail of Ragnar’s face. He noticed a thin scar over his chin that he’d never noticed before, probably old, from childhood even. He felt compelled to ask him and to keep asking him, to say _tell me everything_. 

“This is just the beginning. There is more to come.” 

Athelstan didn’t know if Ragnar was referring to the deaths of his friends, the raids, the events of the night, or most terrifyingly the hand that burned like fire over his knee. Everything in Athelstan told him to push away, but he could not. No, he would stop hiding behind the reason that he was forbidden, that it was ‘I can not’ instead of ‘I will not’. He would not move, still and silent of his own volition. 

“Of raiding?”

“Of everything,” Ragnar whispered, his voice low and his eyes so close they made Athelstan’s head hurt. 

He thanked God that at that moment the door swung open, creating a disturbance forcing distance between them. Athelstan did not trust himself for one more second around Ragnar Lothbrok. 

Opening his mouth to ask Ragnar what was going on, he realized he shouldn’t have been so grateful for an interruption. The men there held their weapons up and asked for Ragnar. Athelstan tried his best to blend into the wall while looking for Bjorn and Gyda. Lagertha had stood in front of them, her arms behind her shielding them. Ragnar had also stood up and moved closer to her. 

They shared a look, something Lagerthan understood with a small nod. In a second Ragnar’s men-for no matter what Ragnar said Athelstan would always just think of them like that, extensions of Ragnar-had fallen into some unspoken agreement that the Earl’s men were unaware of. Of course, they were the Earl’s men, even if they didn’t seem so.

Ragnar ducked the same time Lagertha swung, hitting the first man in the skull and knocking him to the ground. A crack, a squelch, and a dark smell of blood. Floki and Torstein surged forward as a wave and Lagertha pulled back, holding onto Bjorn and Gyda and pushing them to the back door. Athelstan briefly registered that he should be following them, but he couldn’t move. His back seemed welded to the wall, and his feet to the floor. 

Someone swung, someone fell, there was the fleshy crack of bone and the slice of metal. 

Through the ringing clash of swords and axes and bodies, Athelstan was pulled to his feet with a rough hand on his shoulder and yelling in Norse. Even shocked and frozen he would know that voice and that touch anywhere. 

_“Taka til fótanna_ , priest. _Hlaupa_!” Ragnar’s words were not clear, but his voice was. His eyes were shaky but his hands were not. Athelstan heard him clear and crisp as the ringing of church bells. 

_Get up. Run._

The words guide him and slip under his feet as he met with Lagertha and the children, and as they keep going even after the noise has quieted.

_Get up. Run._

They hid at the tree line by the beach, Kattegat a stack of little lights and faint music. 

_Get up. Run_.

Lagertha held the children to her chest as if they were small enough for her to scoop up and hide away from the world. Athelstan could not see in the darkness, but if he could Gyda’s knuckles would be white from holding onto his hand so tightly. 

_Get up. Run._

Even as they returned, shaky but unscratched, to the wagon of bodies and no other death’s the phrase followed him. Ragnar was right. This was just the beginning, but it felt like something much darker than either of them could have anticipated. 

The days after as they hiked back to the farm, Ragnar was restless with energy. Athelstan could feel the anger and fire coming off him in waves. It was the same tightly coiled feeling Ragnar held at Lindesfarne, Athelstan could tell, the feeling that didn’t subside until Ragnar saw his family again and the stress melted from his face like spring icicles.

Even here, with his family, Ragnar was stressed, anyone could see it. 

“ _Gæten_ ,” Athelstan said out of the blue as Ragnar sat at the edge of the water, brooding. Ragnar held in his arms a young goat, small enough still to carry in his arms, yet big enough to squirm and have a mind of its own. The goat was brown with white patches, one of them a small circle over its eye. 

Ragnar looked confused until Athelstan nodded to the goat in explanation.

“ _Gæten?_ ” He questioned, the vowels only a little off.

Athelstan nodded and then pointed to the grown goats in a pen. 

“ _Ond gat_.” 

“They are different?”

“Yes and no,” Athelstan explained, grateful that Ragnar had not yet questioned him on why he was suddenly joining him and resuming their language lessons.

“ _Gæten_ is for the young only. _Gat_ is all.”

Ragnar looked to the river and licked his lips, forming the word over and over under his breath. This was the time Ragnar would give him a word back, and then Athelstan would take it before reshaping it and presenting it anew. This is how their games worked. They would point to things and try their meaning or ask of a word the other had said and then commit it. Later if he were serious, Athelstan would teach him how to better pronounce them and how to form sentences together, and Ragnar would do the same. 

Athelstan thought of it like there were pieces on a large playing board, and with a throw of dice, they would give each other words and meanings and move ever closer to each other. 

“ _Hlaupa_. It is-”

“I know what it means.”

Ragnar raised his arms to his sides and moved them back and forth mimicking the action. Running. Athelstan could not help the bubbly laugh that popped from his mouth at the gesture. 

“You go.”

“Now, you are _gafol_ to me a word.”

“But you have just given me one, there, so do not say I now must give you two.” Ragnar smiled not like he was playing a trick or thinking of plans, but like he was waiting. It dawned on Athelstan that what Ragnar was waiting for was his smile, his laugh, his response. So of course he gave it to him.

“That one means you owe me, _gafol_ , a payment. And you do,” Athelstan protested, a smile plastered to his cheeks but holding back a laugh only because it would make Ragnar more eager to please.

“ _Stjörnur_ ,” Ragnar said, suddenly very serious. He was no longer brooding or grave, but his following words were meant of the heart as well as the mind.

“The sky is the head of Ymir. And _stjörnur_ -” Ragnar held his hands to the sky and flicked his fingers out like he was flinging water- “ _Stjörnur_ from the fire embers of _Muspell_. The fire in the sky.” 

Ragnar looked back at Athelstan for clarification and he could barely nod through the dry knot in his throat. The way Ragnar talked about the world, or about the gods sometimes froze him. The way he whispered with such intensity and the way his eyes seemed to open up made it hard for Athelstan to look at him head-on. Like the sun burning brightest, you should only ever see Ragnar in these moments through shielded eyes or from the sides.

“ _Steorra_ ,” Athelstan said the word in Saxon under his breath, feeling that same hot-cold feeling in his chest. It was like a fist of snakes had replaced itself in his lungs. 

Athelstan realized too late that he thought of the pagan gods as just “the gods” and not “Ragnar’s gods” for the first time. The space the pagan gods were taking in his life and vocabulary was growing uncomfortably large, like an overgrown dog. How long had it been since he’d read the gospel? Or shaved his head?

His fingertips brushed the new hairs there, no longer sharp with their shortness but grown enough to be laid down and soft. If he looked in the water Athelstan was sure he would not be able to see the spot on his head for his tonsure.

“You wish to shave again?” Ragnar guessed.

“Yes. If you will permit it.”

“You do not need me to permit it.” Ragnar shrugged as if it was obvious as if there was an alternate life Athelstan had been living where he was not in the space between slave, servant, and friend.

“You may do what you wish. I only ask one thing, and it is an ask.” Ragnar’s disregard for personal space showed itself again as he moved closer to Athelstan, their thighs and knees touching and their shoulders only breaths away from each other. 

“What does that mean?” Athelstan kept his eyes on the water and not on the violent spasms in his chest.

“It means you are free to say no.” That word again. ‘ _Free_ ’. What was he free to do, really? Although now with his mind so dizzy Athelstan was sure it was not the time to bring it up again. Ragnar earlier in the day had gotten tense when Athelstan questioned him of the pagan laws. He was free if he had ever _not_ been free, not yet in law but in word. He may not have the same status as a free man in Kattegat, but Athelstan knew even if Ragnar proclaimed to every person he met how Athelstan was not a slave they would still treat him differently. But on this farm and to Ragnar and Lagertha and even the children, he held the same status. 

“Then ask it.”

“Let me cut your hair. I do not want you to hurt yourself again.” Ragnar flashed a grin, and it did indeed _flash_ like the sun on the water’s surface, “Besides, you are terrible at it. So clumsy.”

Athelstan huffed and a thin smile grew on his lips against his will.

“If that is what you wish.”

“If that is what _you_ wish, priest. Make a decision.”

_Make a decision_. The phrase, the maybe demand, contained more weight than the bucket of water Athelstan had hauled to the house from the well before sitting with Ragnar. It was not just this decision and just this moment that hung on the scales, but a dedication to diverging paths. Athelstan knew the right answer, the one he should say. He should be grateful and decline the option of choice because trusting himself would get him in trouble. He should trust The Lord, as he did in all matters, in this one. And yet. 

“ _Gise,_ ” Athelstan said in Saxon. Ragnar smiled and then pressed his lips in a line. For his part, he had the decency to look away when he laughed, and not look surprised.

_Yes_. 

Neither of them was able to see what would have happened if they continued down this rocky path. Ragnar stormed off later that day, taking his bedroll with him, and Athelstan would not lie and say he was not disappointed. Minor disappointment turned to rolling fear when Ragnar did not come back and the Earl’s men appeared. In the chaos, he looked up to God and begged for help. Not to save him, but for _them_. In one quick breath, he prayed for Gyda, for Bjorn, and for Lagertha.

The men on their horses, gallops and shouts and swords. Athelstan could see them and hear them and feel them making their way to the farmhouse as he and the children hid away. 

_Useless_. Hiding with the children, hiding as he had in Lindesfarne. Only that time, Ragnar had appeared to save his life. He could only hope the warrior would show again. 

Athelstan's stomach churned at the image of Lagertha standing tense and alone, ax at her side. Her fierceness did not hide but highlighted her fear. 

_And for_ _Ragnar_ , Athelstan prayed, _Lord, please bring him back. Have mercy and send him back. We need him. I need him._

Slowly, and then stronger, like the bursting of a damn, Ragnar Lothbrok turned his back on the forest and started running. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stjörnur and Steorra = stars


	4. advesperascit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> advesperascit-the approaching dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment or a kudos and i'll astral project you a cool rock

Athelstan would never quite get used to seeing so much blood. Seeing an arrow’s mark through Ragnar, and seeing the blood thick and weighing over his shirt, it stirred up cold fear he hadn’t felt since-

Since Lindesfarne. Except it wasn’t the fear for _his_ fate at the hands of the unknown, but for Ragnar’s. 

Except these unknowns had names. The devils that forced him and Lagertha and the children to hide like rats under their own house carried the mark of Earl Haraldson. And they would kill him. They were going to kill Ragnar.

 _Ragnar Lothbrok can’t die. He can’t die. Ragnar can’t die_. 

Athelstan wished he’d said something to him as he urged them under, the same way he did as the Earl’s men found them at Torstein's house. They had done a lot of running and hiding in the past handful of days, and Athelstan wondered if this time Ragnar would come back. He spoke quickly, urgently, and waved them off with wide eyes. 

_“Bless, særður fugl_ ,” Ragnar whispered to him with that fearful, wild look in his eyes. 

Before Athelstan could think, Ragnar grabbed the back of Athelstan’s neck and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Athelstan did the last thing he wanted to do at that moment, the last thing he wanted to do out of thousands of actions and thousands of words. 

Athelstan said nothing and ran. 

They got to the boat with a sinking weight in their chests, Bjorn with tears hovering under his eyelids. Athelstan pretended not to see when Bjorn wiped them away with the back of his wrist and concentrated on pushing the boat out and away. He jumped in, lying side by side with Lagertha, and closed his eyes. His heart was on fire. 

For many minutes none of them would speak or even breathe. Athelstan tried to concentrate on the curve of the rowboat under his back and the feeling of the waves instead of Ragnar covered in blood. Ragnar saying goodbye. Ragnar calling him “bird”, a name that should have embarrassed him but instead made his gut ache with want. He could tell they were all thinking the same terrible thing, their singular thought was so tangible it was a weight threatening to drop over their heads. Athelstan felt if he thought too much, too hard, too loud, something would fall from the sky and smash them with the truth. 

_Ragnar Lothbrok can’t die. He can’t die. Ragnar can’t die_.

After what felt like whole seasons, each heartbeat lasting a day, they looked up from the smell of smoke. All the men were gone, and Ragnar too. The animals and other people working the land were left fallen in pools of blood. And everything, everything burning. It was Lindesfarne all over again, his home up in flames. 

Blurred and numb, Athelstan realized with a bitter afterthought that that was the first time he’d thought of the farm as truly _his_ home. Not just the farm, or the house, or the Lothbrok home. His home. Maybe it was finally the break of assimilation. Maybe it was a coincidence. Whatever the reason, he had for the first and only time realized how tied he was to the farm, and how it was disappearing before his eyes. He couldn’t even imagine how Lagertha, Bjorn, and Gyda felt. All three of them held the same, clenched jaw and stone eyed expression of pain at the sight.

“What do we do?” Athelstan felt like a child to be asking when the children crouching next to him were more composed than he was. 

“We wait for my father,” Bjorn said with anger, not at all convincing. 

“He will come back,” Lagertha assured Bjorn and brushed his hair back. “Your father _always_ has a plan.” 

For their part, none of them acknowledge the crack in Lagertha’s voice or her less than steady breathing. Athelstan wrung his hands together as if he could squeeze Ragnar out of them and push everything back to the way it was. 

The boat drifted down the water with the currents and the wind, every now and then rustles and shouts coming from the forest. They were far enough to be barely a whisper of sound that Athelstan latched onto and prayed for.

_Bring him back to us please Lord. He is not like the others. See what I see and grant mercy onto him._

“I-”

“Stop talking,” Bjorn snapped at him. “You do not belong here. We should have left you on the farm.”

“Bjorn!” Gyda yelled, pouting, and giving him a shove.

“Bjorn,” Lagerthan whispered, too tired to say anything else.

Athelstan couldn’t find any anger at the boy, he felt the same as him most times. He didn’t belong here, and yet he was. They should have left him, but they didn’t. He should never have lived to be here, and yet here he was. Ragnar seemed to be the only one who really knew why Athelstan was here, and now he was just as unknown as Athelstan was.

The apology died on his lips as Athelstan saw a fuzzy shape on top of the cliff face. 

“I see him,” Athelstan said in a whisper that was too excited to be genuinely quiet.

And there he was up on the cliff. The same cliff Ragnar sat upon in the days before in hours of contemplation. Alive. Visibly covered in blood, much more blood, but _alive_. The blood was a simple proof of that. At that moment Athelstan would have claimed to hear angels singing.

 _Thank you, God. Oh God thank you_. 

It was hard to see but Ragnar was clutching at his side and at his leg. He was almost doubled over with how far to the side he was leaning. With a last glance backward, Ragnar looked down at them in the boat and jumped off the cliff.

It was more that he threw himself over the cliff, just barely hanging on to the ability to remain awake. The sense of flooding relief Athelstan felt at seeing him alive slipped from his hands as Ragnar came crashing into the water in a spray of pink. The hope pulled away from him like a slippery fish when in the first second, Ragnar did not come back up. In the background, Lagertha was saying something, doing something. Ragnar did not come back up. 

Athelstan did not think before diving in the water after him. 

The water crushed his chest with cold and his eyes burned from opening them under the dark water. Athelstan felt around the darkness and pushed deeper, kicking and dragging his arms out praying _please let me find him please let me find him_. He would not resurface without him. He would drown there before coming back a failure. 

His arms slid around Ragnar’s torso like they were finding their mark and they bobbed up to the surface. Coughing water out of his own lungs was a secondary as Lagertha hauled Ragnar’s limp form over the rowboat.

Creeping tendrils of fear wrapped around his heart like pieces of seaweed. Ragnar Lothbrok could not die. Ragnar Lothbrok was here, and he was just alive, he was _still_ alive. Even though his skin was wet and cold to touch and he was not breathing, he had to be alive. Athelstan clutched handfuls of Ragnar’s soaking wet tunic in his hands as Lagertha pushed on his chest. Athelstan begged the water to leave Ragnar’s chest, and for him to sit up and breathe. Ragnar open and breathing would be a treasure and a miracle. 

_“Oflyste onwaceþ, oflyste. Æt ús edcierr._ ”

_Please wake up. Come back to us._

He wanted to say come back to _me_. They had so much more to do. There was so much more to talk about. 

The winding strings of fear circling his heart tightened their grip and dug into the muscle so hard Athelstan thought he might start bleeding too. He looked down and saw he was clutching his chest as well as Ragnar’s and thought he ought to stop touching him but could not make himself. He did not want to, for if Athelstan let go of Ragnar for one second he might vanish out from under him.

“ _Æt ús edcierr._ ”

Like he had spoken magic, Ragnar coughed up a fountain of water with a shaking chest. Athelstan and Lagertha each slipped an arm under him and braced his shoulder, pulling Ragnar into a sitting position as he coughed and heaved until all the water had been spit out of his lungs. For one shining second he opened his eyes and stared at each of them in turn, first at Lagertha, then Gyda, then Bjorn, and at Athelstan. His eyes were muted and misty but _alive alive alive_. 

Then Ragnar slumped against their arms and they all noticed at the same time how he was still bleeding.

“What do we do?” Gyda asked. Athelstan would have said the same thing, and he was grateful for her voicing the nervous question hovering in his head.

“Floki,” Bjorn said looking for affirmation from Lagertha and then, surprisingly, from Athelstan. 

“Do you know the way?” Athelstan pressed on the wound in Ragnar’s leg, ignoring the squirming feeling in his stomach from looking at the blood. Now was not a time to reveal his sensitive stomach. 

Bjorn nodded as he and Gyda took to oars and Lagertha tore strips from her dress and bundled them on Ragnar’s chest.

“How can I help?” Athelstan whispered, afraid still that Lagertha might lash out at him with the scared anger of a wounded animal. 

“Bandages. We must still the bleeding until Floki can help.”

Athelstan looked to the hem of his habit, grabbed the edge of it, and ripped.

\-----------------

Athelstan felt like a skittish rabbit hopping around all of them. Floki and Lagertha were taking Ragnar to Floki’s house, Helga had run to gather plants that would help the wounds, even Bjorn and Gyda were helping stoke the fire and unwrapping Ragnar’s soaked through bandages. All the while Athelstan followed them on the outskirts of their circle surrounding Ragnar. He had no place to be so close to them, people that were friend and family to Ragnar for far longer than he had been in his life. It took everything to stand back as Floki stuck knives into the embers and wring his hands together for something to do. They could have told him to move rocks from one place to another or pick up useless weeds and Athelstan would have been happy for a direction and a role. 

“I dedicate this blade to the goddess,” Lagertha whispered, the knife red hot and small in her hands. “Wisdom might you give us Freyer, and healing hands while we live.”

“Hail to the Aesir,” Bjorn whispered. Everyone else echoed his words. Athelstan found himself speaking before he knew he had opened his mouth.

“For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under the sun.” At first, the words gained him confused looks from the children and a slit glare from Floki. Athelstan swallowed and continued the words

“A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal.” 

The knife burned and bubbled with blood on Ragnar’s leg, and he hardly stirred from his sleep.

“Mary mother of God, do not let this man die,” Athelstan begged. His breath came out shaky and he realized that the burning in his eyes was not only from the smoke but from unshed tears. He was terrified as a child, more shaken than he had been since Lindesfarne. 

It had been over a full season since Ragnar brought him here. Athelstan no longer thought of it in terms of being taken, of being held. Ragnar brought him here and though it was not England, it was not the hellish hostile place Athelstan had been raised to believe. It was truly an in-between of worlds, and that feeling of safety would die with Ragnar. Of course, he trusted and cared for Lagertha and Bjorn, and Gyda. They would never harm him and he was sure of that, but he would not have space in this world without Ragnar. 

_“_

” Athelstan began under his breath and fingered the torn edges of his habit. He was reminded that the reason he worse his habit this day was the gusts of cold that came with the changing of the leaves. The seasons were changing as they spoke and his old habit was an extra layer of warmth over his tunic and breeches. Now strips of it were pressed to Ragnar’s bleeding body, and it hung just over his ankles with a frayed edge. In another moment, Athelstan would consider this sacrilege and defilement of a religious object. Now, all he wanted to do was take anything he could get his hands on and use it to stop Ragnar’s bleeding. 

Lagertha took a second blade from the fire and pressed it to Ragnar’s skin again. There came the same sound of burning and bubbling, and the dark smell of flesh.

Bile rose in Athelstan’s throat and he bit his tongue in the middle of the prayer. There was no air in this house, just blood and smoke, and heaviness. Athelstan’s head and chest ached as if he were still underwater.

“Help me with these,” Helga whispered. 

Athelstan nodded and took whatever herbs she placed in his hands and followed her like a lost dog to the table next to the fire. For the first time since he’d known him, Floki looked at him not with spite or anger but with something close to pity. It made Athelstan feel all the sicker.

“Cut these and put them in this, then we will need to make more bandages.” Helga handed Athelstan a small knife and gestured to a wooden bowl filled with green paste. It smelled earthly and sweet, and Athelstan took a breath to let the smell fill his head and breathed out the feeling of burning. 

“Thank you,” Athelstan whispered as he cut the herbs.

“What is it you were whispering? A spell?” Helga questioned. The end of her question contained accusation, and Athelstan realized it was not only pity with which Helga took him and gave him something to do. 

“It is a prayer. It is like a good kind of spell, to wish him healing at the hands of God.”

Helga nodded, her eyebrows furrowed together and her lips pressed in question but no longer in suspicion.

“You can tell your god to get out of our house, priest.” Floki flicked a piece of mashed up flower at him and it landed on his forehead. Despite himself, Athelstan started laughing under his breath. First Bjorn, and now Floki. The way Floki set his lips and glared at him reminded Athelstan of a petulant child. 

“We will welcome the help of any who will heal my husband,” Lagertha whispered. 

Athelstan brushed the flower paste from his forehead and found himself flicking it back at Floki. It landed on his leg and his eye’s widened. For a terrible second, Athelstan thought Floki would take one of the hot knives from the fire and plunge it into his neck. 

Helga laid a hand on Floki’s shoulder and she drained the anger from him like a bucket of water from the well. Floki glared back at Athelstan, only Athelstan was sure there was a speck of mirth in his eyes. 

Floki laughed sharp and squeaky, like a weasel’s cry. And then, and here was the true miracle, he smiled at Athelstan. No anger or hate, just pure surprise.

“Fine then, use your _seiðr_ to wake him. Now we know.”

“Floki!” Helga hissed and shoved him in the shoulder. Floki rocked back and forth and continued working the herbs. 

“What did he mean?” Athelstan asked her, but Helga just shook her head and took the paste from him and brought it to Ragnar.

“Take some cloth and make more bandages. Bjorn,” Helga turned to the boy who bounced up to attention, “Fill this with water and bring it back.” She handed him a bucket and Bjorn took it with both hands and raced out the door. 

Athelstan’s hands were wet and smelled like earthy greens. By the little firelight, he could still see the lines of brown-red blood underneath his fingernails. The sight turned his stomach and he clenched his fingers inward before grabbing onto his habit.

The scratchy wool and the rope that tied it was always a comfort. The knots had come slightly loose and with hands hidden under the table, Athelstan re-tied them from memory. His eyes were fixed on the table, the fire, to Ragnar; without even looking his fingers moved in a pattern he’d memorized for years.

The rope, from three braids. Tied in three circles, ending with three strands and three knots. One for the Father, one for His Son, one for the Holy Ghost. One for poverty, one for obedience, and one for chastity. 

Again Lagertha pressed a hot knife to Ragnar’s skin, and this time he stirred. It meant both that he was alive and that he was closer to feeling the pain. 

Athelstan traced the pattern backward, undoing the knots and letting the braids slip and untangle through his fingers. He wrapped the rope counter to his body and gathered all of it, untied, in his hands. It looked so much smaller all gathered and pressed together. Athelstan could see the start and end of it all the same, and he felt a loss greater than the weight of the physical rope. No, not a loss. There was no hole or scar left behind, just a bit of muscle memory. This was not giving up, this was just. . . changing.

_The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new._

Athelstan slipped the loose habit over his head in a bunch and instantly felt cooler. He hadn’t realized how much heat he’d been holding in his chest until now as the sweat dripped down from his eyes. He was reminded of that first night he and Ragnar spent truly together, where he gave Ragnar his first Saxon word and Ragnar washed the blood from Athelstan’s hair.

God was not in _things_ , Athelstan thought as he took a knife across his habit and cut through so deep that he made a cut in the wooden table under it. He pried the knife up and separated the fabric, folding one half over into his lap and spreading the other half out to cut again. Athelstan cut the first strip from the habit and set it aside before pausing. He took the strip of fabric and tied it around his wrist, around his thumb, and back around his wrist in a tight knot. The knot rested at the underside of his wrist, a small ball right at his pulse. 

He would keep this, and the rope. He was not ready or wanting to give up every symbol of God. Athelstan supposed this shedding of his habit, like a snake shedding its skin, could just be an extension of his vows. Chastity, obedience, and poverty. It was different here, but these strips of fabric and rope were all he had to his name and his name alone. 

_God is not in things,_ Athelstan thought as he cut the second strip of fabric and laid it flat on the table.

God was in his hands, guiding them as he always had when Athelstan would paint or copy scripture. 

God was in this fire, stoking the heat and cleaning the blades.

God was in the water, bubbling and boiling and expelling the impurities.

God was hovering here, as present as the thick smoke clouding the air.

God was in Ragnar Lothbrok opening his eyes three days later, his heartbeat and his soul so strong Athelstan swore he could hear it from across the room.

“Well,” Ragnar said blinking in the sights and accepting gentle hugs from his children, “What did I miss?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless, særður fugl - goodbye little bird 
> 
> Oflyste onwaceþ, oflyste. Æt ús edcierr- Please wake up. Come back to us
> 
> Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin nama gehalgod - the begining of The Lord's Prayer translated, "Our Father who art in heave" etc 
> 
> Seiðr- a type of magic in Norse society related to prediction, but practice by a man was "shameful and dishonorable for a man to adopt a female social or sexual role. A man who practiced seidr could expect to be labeled argr (Old Norse for “unmanly;” the noun form is ergi, “unmanliness”) by his peers" (Dubois, Thomas A. 1999. Nordic Religions in the Viking Age)


	5. via trita, via tuta

“For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under the sun.”

“Oh stop talking of the seasons!” Ragnar huffed and his breath appeared against the snowy air. They had been in Floki’s house for so long the seasons had indeed turned over, and now the early morning dew was slowly changing to frost. Large, wet snowflakes fell from the sky and settled like a soft blanket across the ground by the morning, and in the afternoon had been melted away. 

Athelstan settled the wood on the stump again and steadied it. He brought the ax up with both hands and swung it down. He missed the middle and sent a small piece of the log splitting. 

“Take your time. Be steady.” Ragnar moved as if he was going to stand and help him, but winced and thought better of it. Ragnar sat on a pile of large moss-covered rocks nestled into the side of the hill, wrapped in layers of clothing and thick furs. He looked twice as wide as he should be, and the fur pulled up over his head in a hood made his face look small. 

Ragnar looked like a huddled small child, his nose cold-streaked and red as berries. Athelstan had the urge to give him a bowl of soup and pull the furs tighter over his shoulders.

“Aim first, then strike. And place your left hand higher up.”

Athelstan took the knocked off the log and placed it again. He shifted his hands upon the ax, the strip of fabric from his habit on one hand and the newly-braided rope wrapped around the other. At first, they had felt bulky and a little in the way of his hands, but after some shifting and changing of the wrappings they were a comfort. It was God guiding his hands in everything he did. Spending warm mornings and chilled nights sitting outside with Ragnar by his side and snow in his hair contained a world of peace that Athelstan hadn’t known for a long time.

The ax struck its mark and the wood split evenly in two. 

“It is about fate and timing. I am grateful to God for saving you, and for a calm winter.”

“Well, now you have cursed it. Get inside, quick, we will be buried soon.” 

Athelstan chuckled and set up another piece of wood. Place, aim, swing. The pieces split and fell.

“I do not know why I am here,” Ragnar confessed.

Athelstan stopped the woodcutting and laid the ax sideways across the stump. 

“Here or... _here_.” Athelstan sat next to him on the hill on a section of grass that wasn’t covered in white.

“The gods spared me for a reason, _priest_.” Ragnar smiled at him with a puff of breath in the air. 

“How many times must I tell you I am not a priest?”

“Three more times, and then once more.” For a second Athelstan attempted a glare at him, but they both dissolved into light laughter.

Ragnar looked like a large shaking bear with every grin. Without thinking, Athelstan reached out to him and pulled the fur which was over Ragnar’s head as a hood farther down his face with a tug. The fur covered his eyes and left only his red face and smile. 

Ragnar got him back by simply kicking Athelstan’s foot with his good leg. 

“You are a child.”

“You have started it!” Ragnar exclaimed. After another fit of laughter from them that echoed up the trees, Ragnar took a few heavy breaths and clutched at his side. Realization dawned on Athelstan all too late and he wished he’d never started speaking to Ragnar.

‘I’m sorry, your wounds-”

“Do not treat me as a child, not you too. I will be well.” Ragnar straightened himself out and Athelstan thought he saw him try and puff out his chest just a bit, like a cat raising its hair to make itself bigger.

“I must do something. I have asked myself over and over, why me?” Ragnar faced Athelstan with a fierceness in his eyes that had been more and more uncommon since their home was burned down. Now it seemed like Ragnar was trying desperately to grasp it back, if only for a moment. 

“I have gained the favor of the gods. I do not know why, but I have. And I must prove myself fit for it, otherwise, I should have died.”

A chill ran down Athelstan’s spine that he pretended was entirely due to the cold. 

“You nearly did. It was frightening.”

Ragnar waved him off with a roll of his eyes.

“I am alive now, that is all.”

“You didn’t see yourself. You didn’t see your children, scared for you.” 

_And I was too, Ragnar. Do you know how close you came? Do you know what battles we fought for a week to keep you breathing? Do you know that Floki seldom slept? Do you know how Bjorn wept for you?_

Ragnar’s expression closed off with furrowed eyebrows and empty eyes. 

Athelstan almost jumped to say something and to fill his anger but held back on it. He was entirely too uncomfortable with letting Ragnar stew for a little and always rushed too hastily to make amends. Athelstan stood up and continued with the wood, brushing snow off his behind and shaking the flakes from his head. He struck a particularly large log and thought they should go back inside soon if the snow continued.

He knew from the signs of the land that this was a calm winter, but for England, it was already cooler than he was used to. The weather and the patterns of the seasons here were very different from Northumbria, or Wessex, or even Frankia. The winters and summers were harsher, with deeper freezes and brighter sun. The same way Athelstan found himself overheated in the summer from the cloudless sky, he found himself almost always shivering from the cold as the seasons changed again. In England, everything was decisively more grey. It got cold, but never this hot, and it was always raining. In a way, Athelstan missed the rain. It was a fitting comparison. Kattegat was the bold thunder of Thor, England was the gentle rain of The Lord. 

The ax got stuck in the log and Athelstan tried to pry it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Taking a breath, he lifted the ax over his head with the wood still on it and brought it down with new force on the stump. The wood cracked almost fully open, and Athelstan grabbed the sides of it with his hands and pulled them apart with a satisfying split. It struck Athelstan that in these few seasons here he’d built on more muscle than he’d ever had in his life. He would feel his arms turn burning with effort and then sore with the aftermath, and always ever stronger. Even the callouses on his hands had moved from the sides of his knuckles from gripping quills and brushes to across his palms and under his fingers. 

The evidence of such change made his heart both swell with pride and shrink with grief.

_All things made new._

“ _Skaði_ is our goddess of winter,” Ragnar said in not quite a whisper but low enough that Athelstan almost dismissed the noise for wind in the trees.

He turned to face Ragnar and set the ax down once more.

“ _Skaði_?” Athelstan pushed the name out of his mouth in pronunciation. Ragnar nodded.

“We do not often pay mind to many smaller gods as we do to Thor or Odin. But we all know of _Skaði_.”

Athelstan moved to brush away the snow to sit down, but Ragnar shrugged off part of his furs to settle on the ground before he could do anything. Always quicker than him, Ragnar was. Ragnar’s eyes glittered and the corner of his mouth turned up. 

“And why is that?” Athelstan sat down, lining up his shoulder to Ragnar’s. 

“Winter is an important season. A time to rest and wait. A time that must be ever prepared for. A season that gives, and a season that takes.” 

Athelstan noticed how Ragnar’s phrasing mirrored that of the passage from Ecclesiastes. 

_For everything, there is a season_. _A time for every matter under the sun_. 

“Would you like me to tell you how to say priest in my language?”

“I thought you were not a priest?”

“It is a word to know.” Athelstan shrugged, his shoulder moving against Ragnar’s.

 _It is a word I am giving you_. 

Ragnar nodded.

“ _Ciricþingere._ ”

Ragnar wrinkled his nose and tried to pronounce the word a few times, slowly working over the start of it.

“Your language is," Ragnar paused, "very different.”

Athelstan smiled and breathed a huff of laughter out of his nose.

“That is what I told you the first night you asked to learn. Yet here you are.”

Athelstan realized that the feeling in his chest, right in between his lungs that swelled like the waves that had not gone away for many weeks was a kind of prideful joy. Not for himself, but for Ragnar. They had so much extra time, not much of it alone but time nonetheless, and every second Ragnar kept asking for more. Like a child asking for sweets or toys, there was a fascination in Ragnar’s eyes for knowledge. Once, two nights ago, he had been able to hold quite a long conversation with Athelstan in Saxon without many fumbles. 

“I am a monk. I will tell you that one in Saxon tonight if you come back inside.” Athelstan stood up quickly and rubbed his hands together. He could blame the numbness of his fingers for his haste instead of that new feathery feeling in his stomach whenever he was too close to Ragnar. Athelstan held out a hand to Ragnar to help him up. 

“So you are bargaining with me now?” Ragnar swept the furs back and took his hand with a grin. Athelstan concentrated on helping Ragnar walk and the ax in his other hand. He ran his hands over the wood and gripped the tool so tight his knuckles pinched and hurt.

Ragnar’s hand fit around Athelstan’s like a perfect glove, and he was as always much warmer than Athelstan was. His hand was calloused and rough in the same spots where Athelstan’s hands were just toughening up. Athelstan didn’t realize he was moving his thumb over Ragnar’s hand until he felt a light scar over Ragnar’s finger, close to the knuckle. 

“Thank you, priest.” Ragnar smiled at him softer than usual, and Athelstan opened his mouth to speak but found no words prepared. 

For all their many days studying language, and for Athelstan’s years of study alone, he never had feelings for another language like he did his mother tongue of Saxon. Latin was the language of The Lord, and he was tied to it and the things it symbolized. Frankish was complicated to say but sounded, at times, musical. The changed Latin of Rome was constant chanting and always made him feel dizzy or tired. The northmen’s language was harsh as they were, and sounded like thunder over his tongue, but was so different than anything else it was hard to adapt to. 

Athelstan did not have a favored language, but the way Ragnar said “priest” in Norse was undoubtedly his favorite word. 

\--------------------

Ragnar’s message of challenge to the Earl weighed on Athelstan for the rest of the day, as it usually did when he was not immediately occupied by anything. His habit of worrying was made good when he was charged with copying scripture, for the attention to detail and dedication meant a well-finished piece. It helped when he was fishing, for he knew patience and how to look for signs. It helped when he spent time gathering herbs and flora with Helga, for he never picked anything without assuring thrice over what it was and it’s safety. 

Athelstan’s deep thinking and tendency to stay in his head did not do him well in stress. He spent most of the time while Floki told them pagan stories not here by the fire but thinking of the days and weeks to come. Even if he was the strongest and craftiest warrior Athelstan had ever known, Ragnar was in no position to fight. He had escaped and fought the Earl’s men at the farm and barely taken his life along with him. 

The Earl was older, Athelstan reasoned, and that would be his disadvantage. His advantage would be his power, and his ability to make the fight more unequal than it already was. Ragnar’s disadvantage would be his wounds and his slowed movements. Ragnar’s advantage would be his quick thinking and his familiarity with fighting. 

The low fire popped and startled Athelstan out of his thoughts as he looked around the house and stretched his neck. He laid with his hands clasped under his head looking at the roof as if it were the sky and he could find some answers in the wood. It had been long since the rest of the house fell asleep, and Floki’s light snores and occasional grumbles were measures of time. Athelstan sat up and grabbed his bedroll with him. This late at night it would be cold, but perhaps the air would shock him into sleep.

Athelstan also picked up the threadbare blanket he slept on and looped it over his shoulder. The door creaked the slightest when he opened and closed it, but he was outside without waking anyone else. 

Shivering, Athelstan pulled his clothes tighter to himself and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. It seemed too cold even for snow, for the air was frozen and clear. A thin layer of frost had formed on the ground and crackled gently as Athelstan walked back towards where he chopped wood that morning. He nestled himself into a corner shaped by the slight hill and wrapped the bedroll around his shoulders. Immediately he felt the cold retreat as it ebbed and flowed from his bones. Athelstan didn’t think he’d ever get properly used to the cold here, but he could try. 

The door creaked again, followed by the slow pattern of feet on the frost. Athelstan’s heart quickened and sunk as if he were back on a ship at sea. He tried to reason with himself and that nothing bad could happen if anyone had caught him going outside. What rule had he broken, what disturbance had he caused? It was a habit he’d harbored as a young boy, scared of every broken twig and scattered voice. 

Athelstan had nothing to fear here, at least, he did not need to fear the people he was with. The Lothbrok family would never hurt him, he was sure of that now, as sure as he’d been about anything in his entire life. 

“What are you hiding from _særður fugl_?” 

Athelstan turned to see the shadowed outline of Ragnar standing above him. In a trick of the moonlight, Athelstan swore he was Ragnar’s teeth flash a sparkling sharpness. 

“I am not hiding. I am thinking.” 

“About how you still owe me?” Ragnar sat down in a huff next to Athelstan and shrugged a fur over both of their shoulders. Athelstan found protests lodged in between his teeth and didn’t voice them. He pulled the fur over his shoulder and leaned into Ragnar, both of them touching at every joint. Athelstan felt warmer already with the fur and the smell of fire Ragnar brought with him.

“ _Munec_ ,” Athelstan said knowing exactly what Ragnar was talking about. 

“What were you thinking about?” 

“You ask many questions. What happens when I don’t know the answer?” Athelstan knew he was being difficult and that the middle of the night was no time for jests, but he wanted to keep the real reasons he ran out here locked away.

“ _Oú bist sum munec. . . ond íc bist feormeham._ ” Ragnar looked rather proud of himself. 

_You are a monk, and I am a farmer._

_“Íc bēo,_ not _bist_. _Bist_ is for you, and _bēo-_ ”

“Is for me, yes.” Ragnar cut him off with a wave of his hand and a smile pulling up the corner of his mouth.

“I was distracted.”

Athelstan chuckled.

“By _what?_ ”

Ragnar’s eyes moved from Athelstan’s forehead to his eyes and around his face as if Ragnar was reading details of his face like words on a book. 

“You,” Ragnar said. 

Ragnar’s lips looked dry, and as he spoke the word his breath turned visible in the cold air. It looked like he was breathing smoke.

Athelstan swallowed down the sudden dryness in his mouth and weighed his answers. He should not buy into Ragnar’s teasing and ignore him. He should lean away from him and practice indifference. He should say again and again, “I cannot” to anything Ragnar asked of him and pray for a stronger will. It is what he always did, and it was safety.

“And why is that?”

Didn’t God cast out the devil for asking questions? Didn’t He punish him, he who was God’s favorite angel, for the sin of arrogance and distrust?

Familiar sparks of doubt blew through Athelsta’s head, the questions flying through and being held up to the light of his wants and the scale of his reason. It would be so easy to let go, but so much harder to pull away. Athelstan felt like a fish with hooks digging into his skin one way while he tried to swim the other. 

“Because I have one more question.”

Athelstan looked away from Ragnar’s mouth and focused on the ground. The little dry pine needles, the crushed clovers, the tiny twigs. It was much harder to focus on this. It was much safer it focus on this.

“Ask away.”

“What would you say if I asked you to bed again?” Ragnar tilted his head to the side and looked him up and down. 

There it was. Exactly what Athelstan was afraid of.

“You are wounded. You don’t...have a bed right now.”

Ragnar leaned his head back and let out a heavy breath with a smile.

“Those are not answers.”

“I-” 

“Priest.” Ragnar grabbed and wrapped both his hands around one of Athelstan’s, gently pulling him closer and forcing Athelstan to look at him. Ragnar was perhaps the hardest man Athelstan had ever met to ignore. 

“I _can’t_ ,” Athelstan pleaded, hoping the two words told Ragnar all the hurt he held.

“Then what can you? Not all touch is unlawful is it?” Ragnar glanced down at their joined hands and Athelstan followed his gaze, finding their hands clasped together easier to look at than Ragnar’s eyes. There was too much emotion there, so much longing hidden over by hurt and disparity. 

Athelstan could stand up and leave. There was no longer a rope around his neck pulling him this way and that, telling him what to do and where to go. He just _did not want to_. He wanted to stay here and abandon himself to this, to keep feeling Ragnar’s hands wrapped around his like a blanket. 

“I can’t,” Athelstan whispered. 

But he shouldn’t. This was wrong, this was not made to be in so many ways. Ragnar was pagan. Ragnar had blood on his hands that would never be washed off, that Ragnar did not _want_ to wash off. Ragnar was married, Ragnar was a man. Ragnar was the opposite of anything Athelstan should have wanted.

And Athelstan wanted him. 

“Athelstan,” Ragnar whispered so softly Athelstan almost didn’t hear him. It was the only time Athelstan could remember Ragnar using his name. It felt so heavy, so much more meaningful that Athelstan would describe. 

“You are a free man. Ask me to stop and I will.”

Ragnar brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Athelstan’s hand over his knuckles, soft and tickling like a small beetle's legs. Just barely there. 

“Kiss me,” Ragnar pleaded. His eyes were so easy to read. So full of want and that openness that was rare in his Viking world.

“Just once. Tell me no and I will never ask again. I will never speak of it again.”

“No.”

Ragnar’s face fell before he furrowed his eyebrows and nodded. The picture of a Viking, a face of stone. He let go of Athelstan’s hand.

“No,” Athelstan whispered and grabbed Ragnar’s hands with his by the wrist. Athelstan’s hands were shaking and his heart beating so fast it ached. 

_You want this. Claim it._

Athelstan leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together, guiding Ragnar’s hands with his own to rest at the sides of Athelstan’s neck. Athelstan let out a shaky sigh; the breath had come tumbling out of his mouth like rocks on a mountain. 

Ragnar smiled and wound his hands up to Athelstan’s hair, one hand on the back and the other over his ear. Athelstan was heaving as if he had run for his life. Maybe in some symbolic sense, he had. 

_All things made new_. 

Athelstan could not at the moment be bothered to think too deeply about it. All he knew was that he wanted this, wanted to be in this moment more than anything else life could have offered. 

“ _Cosset mec_ ” Athelstan was too tightly wound and dizzy to bother translating. 

_Kiss_ _me._

“It is almost the same,” Ragnar whispered as he moved his lips against Athelstan’s forehead, just as he had done in that moment before the Earl’s men took their farm. 

Athelstan groaned shifted the fur covering both their bodies against the new gust of wind. 

“Is this really a time for lessons?” 

Ragnar chuckled under his breath. They were so close Athelstan could feel the warmth of it against his skin, and the buzzing laughter from Ragnar’s lips. 

Athelstan realized Ragnar was still waiting for him, still treading around him so carefully as if Athelstan were a thin piece of pottery. 

Athelstan kissed him. 

Ragnar moved his hands back to Athelstan’s hair, moving his lips and his hands in rhythm like he was keeping time with song. For all Athelstan knew, maybe Ragnar was. 

Somewhere very far away it was windy, but Athelstan was made of fire. Somewhere very far away he was scared, but Athelstan was brave. Ragnar’s hands were warm and roughly thrown in his hair and his lips like red-hot metal. His beard was tickling and made Athelstan smile when they stopped to breathe. 

Out of everything it was unexpected. Ragnar's every movement betrayed a fragile softness. Ragnar slowly brushed through the tangles in Athelstan’s hair, he captured Athelstan’s lips without harshness or urgency. He was gentle. And he was telling the truth. 

Athelstan didn’t know much about anything in the realm of relations. He wasn’t even sure he was kissing Ragnar right if there was a right way to do this. 

But Ragnar was telling the truth. This wasn’t how you kissed someone trying to lead them to bed. Ragnar just wanted to _kiss_ him. 

It was too much. It was everything Athelstan had wanted and more, and he was drowning in it. 

Breathing felt like coming up for air underwater as he laid his head on Ragnar’s shoulder, afraid that he wouldn't be able to even sit up without his support. Ragnar planted a kiss on the top of his head and kept his hands in Athelstan’s hair. 

_“Þú hefur hjartað mitt, fugl. Þú hefur_ soul _mitt.”_ He whispered. 

Athelstan frowned and shook his head. All the words were a soundless buzz.

“I don’t. . .”

Ragnar slid his hand away from Athelstan’s hair and Athelstan sighed at the loss of contact. 

Guiding him to sit up, Ragnar placed his hand flat against Athelstan’s chest, over his heart. Ragnar then placed his other hand over his own chest, in the same place. 

“ _Hjartað. Hjartað mitt_.” 

Heart.

“You-” Athelstan started and stopped. There were no words that needed to be said other than that. 

_You have my heart. You have my soul_. 

Ragnar held the entire world in his hands and gave it to Athelstan, easy as if he were handing over a fishing line. His heart. His _soul_. Athelstan had taught Ragnar what his soul was and now Ragnar was offering it up to him with flattened palms and painfully hopeful eyes. He wanted nothing in return. The only thing Athelstan wanted to do at that moment was to try and give him something back. 

“ _Mín heorte_.” 

Athelstan kept a firm hand over Ragnar’s chest as he kissed him again, lips sliding together more assuredly. Athelstan sighed and slipped his tongue over Ragnar's lip, tasting ale and fire. It was fitting that even now Athelstan was giving Ragnar more and more words like so many broken pieces of bread crumb by crumb. Athelstan thought of what would happen when he’d run out of words and wonders, left with nothing but himself to offer. He pushed the thought out of his mind.

“ _Mín heorte_.” 

Ragnar pulled Athelstan on top of him and even as they moved to lie down on the grass, Athelstan refused to move his hand from Ragnar’s chest. He braced one leg between Ragnar's and the other to the side, resting all his weight on his forearms and his knees so as not to put weight on Ragnar's wounds. With his palm slipped under his leather vest, Athelstan could feel Ragnar’s heart beating under all the layers of fabric. 

He imagined it beating faster than a bird's wings, racing like a horse's gallop. Unmistakably alive. 


End file.
